Bringing it Home

Near the Brazilian mountain village of Rio de Contas the air is so thin that, running along its dirt roads, a casual jogger might feel like he is breathing through a straw. Not Jose Moreira. The seasoned marathoner knows that the sugarcane-growing community is an ideal spot to train. And an even better place to find budding runners.

Moreira, 34, was born in a farmhouse near Rio de Contas in a town called Marcolino Moura, where he says the average yearly salary is roughly $1,200, unemployment hovers at 70% and many athletes run barefoot. At 13, Moreira moved to the Brazilian city of Sao Paolo, where he eventually worked with orphaned kids. It was an experience that he says cemented his desire to emigrate to the U.S., to train as a runner, and ultimately to make a difference.

After arriving in the U.S. 12 years ago, Moreira trained in Albuquerque, NM, and soon moved to Boston. With personal bests of 2:17:04 in the International Marathon at Pampa Traviesa in Argentina (1993), 2:23:07 in the Chicago Marathon (1994) and 2:29:29 in the Boston Marathon (1997), Moreira has become an aspiring Olympian. He hopes to go on to the 2004 U.S. Marathon Trials in Birmingham, AL, but his main focus is on a different goal.

"I made a vow that when I had success in America I would do something to help the children of my country," Moreira says. "I wanted to give something back to my community and provide opportunities."

A Way to Give Back

Moreira has long known he wanted two things: to run and to make a difference. So in March 2001, Moreira, together with his wife, Diana Hughes, whom he met at a Cape Cod road race five years ago, and family friend Michael Copass, a personal trainer he met through a running club, created the Discover America and Brazil Foundation (DABF), a nonprofit organization designed to train young Brazilian runners and eventually to bring American and Brazilian athletes together.

This past June, Moreira and Copass visited Brazil to organize local races and to encourage the kids’ zeal for running. There, they put together a temporary summer training center in Engenho Velho (pronounced "en-JANE-yo VAY-yo"), about 12 miles from Rio de Contas, located in the northeastern Brazilian state of Bahia. They built a 400-meter race track on a nearby airstrip using rope and painted stones. Afterwards they distributed awards to race participants.

One of Moreira’s favorite stories from a previous trip involves 15-year-old Daniel DaSilva, who lives in Moreira’s native village and who had trained for a one-mile race that Moreira scheduled for the morning, when Daniel usually helped his mother sell beans at the market. Reluctant to leave his chores, Daniel asked Moreira to change the start time so he could race after work. Moreira did, and Daniel came in first, winning 25 Reales (then worth about $11) and a new pair of sneakers.

"His mother was crying," Moreira says of Daniel, who gave more than half his winnings to his family. "He was jumping around like a little kangaroo."

The Big House

This year the goal is to complete construction on a training center near Rio de Contas. "The Big House," as the center is called, will be located on 12,000 square meters near Rio de Contas. Moreira says his goal is to recruit runners from local villages and eventually to expand the training center to house between 40 and 80 athletes from Brazil and beyond.

For now, the DABF timeline includes plans to expand the runners’ horizons with trips to racing sites within Brazil and other South American countries within six years. In the next decade, the foundation hopes to bring DABF runners to compete in the most competitive U.S. races.

But Moreira and Copass have laid the groundwork and found that there are people willing to lend a hand. In addition to a handful of U.S. volunteers, the foundation currently consists of about 10 kids and two full-time coaches: Moreira’s brother, Alexsandro, and another of Moreira’s running mates, accomplished marathoner Luis Ramos. Ramos most recently won the 2002 Bermuda Marathon in 2:26:25.

American Exchange

"If we can, we’d love to have American kids living and training with the Brazilian kids," says Copass who would like to implement a high school exchange program that includes language lessons, web site connections, a sister school program and a range of life skills training.

"American kids can learn a lot and train well there," Moreira says of the DABF training center, which is located roughly 3,600 feet above sea level in the Chapada Diamantina mountains. There, he hopes to introduce American teens both to another culture and high altitude conditioning.

In-kind Giving

Moreira says the best part about starting DABF is sharing his joy of running, training and competing. Copass agrees. "Jose and I are both runners," he says. "Running is what we do, what we know, and what we know how to share and teach."

"If we happened to be poets, we might [start] a Shakespearean sonnet camp," he adds. "The essential ingredients are the enthusiasm of Brazilian kids and their families, and our willingness to share our passion for running."

"Of the runners we work with closely, most come from large families [who] barely get by," Copass says. But despite rising at 3 A.M., working in the fields, and attending school, which DABF requires of its athletes until they turn 18, "the kids are respectful and industrious," Copass says. "They apply themselves utterly when there is work to be done."

At the current training center the athletes, both boys and girls, do interval training on Mondays, a tempo run on Tuesdays, hill conditioning on Wednesdays, and play soccer on Thursdays. "Soccer becomes speedwork in disguise," says Copass.

In the summer camp-type setting, the runners will also work in the gardens, prepare meals and help keep the training center clean. Upon completion of the center, athletes will train early in the morning, and again in the afternoon, running a daily total of between four and six miles, Copass says.

Copass says DABF has fielded criticism from people who wonder if the training center will recruit enough runners to become operational. But he has visited Rio de Contas and says he has seen kids "line up to be part of this, to participate, to run and to be with people who believe in them."

"There is boundless energy in these kids," he adds. The task for DABF, he says, is to meet that energy with equal and sustainable measure. "A tough challenge has been to make our work into something permanent," says Copass.

Passion and Dreams

Some of the kids write letters to the Moreiras in Portuguese. They boast of their best times, their longest runs and their hopes for the future. Most of them express the modest desire to one day become the most famous marathon runners in the world, and with Moreira’s foundation, they have a better shot than ever before.

"My best times for the 5K are 21:01 and 23:36," writes Gerfeson Santos Silva, 17. "For a long time, I ran barefoot" [DABF recently donated Silva’s new running shoes]. Silva writes that running has helped him "open a new path," but recognizes that the training will prove intense. "It is up to us to do our part," he writes, "to train and train a lot."

Other kids, like 18-year-old Vagner Ferreira de Souza, have expressed a desire to train like Moreira, in the hope of contributing something valuable themselves. "I enjoy running because it makes life better," he writes. "When things improve for us, I will go to help those who are needy."

Running, as Moreira points out, is a passion that kids in this impoverished village can enjoy with relatively little expense, but things like shoes and qualified trainers require capital. That’s where Moreira’s second job, as customer service representative and shoe consultant for DSW Shoe Warehouse, comes in. The store has been a primary contributor to Moreira’s foundation, donating 80 pairs of shoes and $5,000 to the Brazilian runners. Other corporate sponsorship raised the total to more than $8,700 in the form of clothing, shoes and cash donations.

More importantly, his job allows him the flexibility to pursue his own running and his foundation’s goals. Those goals are ambitious but attainable, especially for someone with Moreira’s drive. And as Hughes points out, her husband’s dedication is infectious. "[The kids] just follow him around" in Brazil, she says. "The excitement is insane."

"We just want the kids to be excited about running," says Moreira. Hughes, says, "[Moreira] is giving these kids a future they wouldn’t have otherwise...The vehicle is running, but it’s more important than that." She points out that even those who do not become world-class runners learn about the commitment, community and discipline that running can foster.

Most recently, DABF has launched its own web site, www.dabf.org. To get the foundation off and literally running will take time, but Moreira remains optimistic. "Training as a distance runner taught me that I could accomplish anything I set my mind to, through work, discipline and faith" he says.

Moreira continues to train, usually running 10 miles a day and 20 on Sundays. His current goal is to improve his best Boston Marathon time, but his real ambition lies with the foundation he began.

"I can see myself in a few years, waiting at the [Boston] finish line for my runners," Moreira says. "That’s my dream."

Emily Newman received her masters in journalism from Boston University. She currently works for a financial newspaper in Washington, D.C.